One thing I neglected to mention about yesterday’s episode…and I have to confess, I didn’t mention it because it seemed so ordinary that comment never occurred to me. But later I realized that it was ordinary in the real world, and not in Funky Winkerbean. In Funky Winkerbean, it was the proverbial sore thumb, and it shoulda stuck out like one.

Of course, I’m talking about the fact that Becky got a smart-phone app, and she was happy with it. She was pleased with what she got, and looked forward to using it.

It was not, repeat not, something substandard that had foisted upon her by an uncaring school administration. She didn’t even moan once!

By way of contrast, look upon the Dozing Dullards out in Hollywood, who upon hearing that the movie they are working might be certain of box-office success, can do nothing but bemoan the extra work that will befall them. Oh, the horrors of success! Oh My GOD I have to work even more?

Well, Pete–and you too, Darrin–there’s a very simple solution that will cause all your problems to disappear, and you can leap about in unending joy.

Quit. Go on up to Clay Breakdance (or whatever his name is) and tell him you’re tired of all the effort that is expected of you, and that you (so far) seem to have failed to provide. You’re both tired of working, and it’s really cutting into your nap time, and your nostalgic day-dreaming about Bantom comics. I’m sure his lips will curl just a bit as he accepts your resignations. Clay will be happy to bring in a crew who actually want to work, and don’t look upon every suggestion as a knife in the back.

And there’s a bonus for both of you! When the movie is released some months hence, and proves to be a box-office smash, you can bemoan the fact that you were cheated out of all that money. And that, no doubt, will trigger even more flashbacks.

Win-win, I say. Now, now, I know those are dirty words in the Funkyverse, but as they say–faint heart never won bitter regrets.

(It kind of makes me wonder what sort of movie Pete and Darin would make if they had complete control–what sort of cinematic turd would satisfy their notion of purity. I should note that it doesn’t make me wonder enough to actually see that movie, or hear them talk about it.)

PS: No idea who the very detailed gentleman is, but he sure seems to be someone from Real Life. Perhaps someone who lost a bet–that’s my guess, anyway.

24 responses to “Where Dreams Go to Be Smashed to Flinders”

Great. So not only do we have to endure these two idiots sulking and moping over being employed by a Hollywood blockbuster franchise, but we’ll also have to endure yet another one of Batiuk’s bizarre comic book company fantasies…again. Great, that’s just great.

So if you’re a comic book writer (or a guy who likes to doodle between pizza deliveries), what could be better than landing a gig writing for the movies? Comic books, TV, then movies…that’s the pinnacle, or so I’d believe. Pete has reached the absolute heights of his profession, his dream profession no less. Yet every time we see him he’s miserable and complaining about having to work. So with those facts in mind, I think we can safely conclude that Pete is a giant asshole and quite frankly not a person that seems like he’d be a lot of fun to be around.

And this Boy Lisa. Not all that long ago this dipshit was living in LES MOORE’S house. Now he’s a Hollywood storyboarder with more work than he can handle. And just like Pete he’s bemoaning his fate, cursing the dark forces that continue to conspire against him. Another giant asshole.

In these rough economic times, when millions of young Americans are un- or under-employed and burdened by sizable student loan debt, it is refreshing to read about two 30-somethings who really appreciate their jobs… film industry jobs that are a much-sought after dream for many.

I’m glad Slicky McRealguy reminded these two goofs, and us Beady Eyed Nitpickers, what movie they were working on. Raise your hand if you had forgotten. Yeah, me too.

“Wait, did you say ‘our Starbuck Jones movie?’ Aw damn! Are you sure that’s what this is? Damn. I was writing the sequel to Lust For Lisa — “Who Is That Strange Woman Hanging Around My House Interrupting My Writing?”

They’ll probably be on the eleventh or twelfth sequel a year or two from now, rolling their eyes at yet another hackneyed movie title courtesy of BanTom’s vivid yet not fully-formed SJ fantasy world, a dismal place where everyone hates doing everything. Otherwise he’ll have to, you know, move the story along and, uh…yeah.

I think I see what he’s getting at here today and with these SJ/Batom Comics arcs in general. See, you may end up living your dream and turning your silly doodling into a lucrative career but even if you do it’s just mostly a joyless grind where everyone makes insane demands of you all the time.

And on top of that, he uses a cheap gimmick (the sequel) to keep his little “oh the torture of being so creative” woe-fest trudging along. What contempt for the audience, he’s doing a story about how miserable the creative process is even as he dodges all creativity himself with the very story he’s telling. What balls.

I wonder how long it’ll take until we lurch into the excruciatingly stupid flashback. We’ll probably go all sepia-toned tomorrow so we can have Batiuk whine about how HAAAAAAAAAAARD it is to create and how unappreciative snarker-trolls are and how terrible Stan Lee was for not immediately calling him the savior of comics and how horrible Michael Eisner was for telling him that Crankshaft actually had to have a redeeming characteristic to be watchable.

I’d have thought Boy Lisa and Mopey Smurf would be delighted that they’d be working for another year or so. I can’t wait until tomorrow’s flashback, where we’ll get to see how creative people have been abused since 1952.

Speaking of creativity, I see that T-Bats’ sideline of drawing caricatures at the State Fair is still paying off (“Well, I can do a caricature for $25, but for $150, I’ll give you a cameo in Funky Winkerbean. Funky Winkerbean. FUNKY WINK ER BEAN, you know, the newspaper comic strip about cancer and shit? Yeah, I draw that, you know.”

I’m doing what I dreamed of doing in high school and I’m miserable. I’m being asked to be creative by the people who give me money instead of them, well bless me If I know. Honestly fail to see Pete’s problem here- not only do they like what he does (why I can’t say we haven’t see word one of his work for the film.) but they want him to do even more! And if this film is a hit this could a career making. But is Pete happy excited no, Pete acts like this is horrible. But other than Pete’s just a jerk who wants the adulation of being a popular and successful writer without actually doing the work needed to be one I can’t imagine why he’s so upset. Boy Lisa has more reasons for worry -it’s been weeks and there is no sign of his wife and child who for all we know might be in the hands of Oklahoma cannibals.

The most sympathetic reading of this I can make out is that the movie-making has turned into this Sisyphean chore. Mopey and Boy Lisa keep getting their assignment much of the way done, and then there’s suddenly an announcement from above that the whole focus of the movie has changed, there’s new characters, there’s different settings, there’s a whole new two-hour plot explaining Starbuck Jones’s origins that the original comic did in four panels for crying out loud …

Anyway, I can imagine being sympathetic for people who keep getting undercut before they finish anything and who have to keep restarting it from scratch. Even if you’re doing stuff you like always getting reset to start is grinding.

But I’m not sure this has been made clear in the comic. I think it’s implicit how every four months there’s a declaration that they’re going in a new direction and Mopey and Boy Lisa act burdened. Still, for all I know, Tom Batiuk figures we’ll agree the problem is that nobody’s paying enough attention to the True Meaning Of Starbuck Jones or that Flashback Guys Who Maybe Existed Or Something got underpaid for their work.

Why don’t these two whiny assholes climb down off the cross and just quit? Batiuk keeps trying to portray our moron heroes as slaves shackled to their desks when they’re working their dream job for an obscene amount of money, and only got hired in the first place out of pure cronyism…

Are these to digging ditches for a living? I right now, would kill to be in these two idiots positions. Writing a script for two potential blockbuster movies? Yeah, I think I could survive that for a couple Add to the fact that I am also in L.A. Yeah, what a cruel world.

i worked in the movie biz for thirty years. Batscrote has no idea how Hollywood operates. These two idiots should be very happy to have these jobs, especially with zero film experience catapulting them to the top. Writers make some great coin, and a storyboard artist would never be around that long in the process, unless he was servicing the producer. Hmmmm…maybe that’s what’s going on.

So again we get TomBat mining the “We’ll never get this done because the boss keeps demanding changes!” trope. To see how a comic based on this idea can actually be funny, check out yesterday’s “Dilbert.” To see how a comic based on this idea can be dull and whiny, just keep following “Funky.”

Money? Their contracts probably call for a really small amount, plus a percentage of the “profits.” Of course, even Star Wars: The Force Awakens somehow manages to “lose money” when it comes time to pay out anything based on profits.

Well, we already know that Batiuk doesn’t know how contracts work. This just adds to that since he now appears to be suggesting that Dorkin and Mopey are being paid a flat fee for their work and their bosses just keep piling more and more work on them. He also doesn’t know what a storyboardist does, but that’s been addressed before.

Instead, I love how Batiuk has now retconned Mason into this huge star who pulls “supernova buzz” on whatever he’s doing. After all, he was introduced in 2014 as being cast as Les Moore in an abortive television film of Lisa’s Story. In that sequence, he was referred to as “the guy who lost out on the role for Starbuck Jones”, so he was in fact more known for a role didn’t get rather than anything he’s actually done. (Anyone think Adrian Paul, for example, is referred to as “that guy who wasn’t cast as James Bond”?) He bailed on Lisa’s Story right in the middle of production for Starbuck Jones, a move that would be career suicide which instead apparently had the opposite effect. (It was also not explained how he went from not being cast to being cast) And now, even though that was twenty months ago and the film’s been in development hell, and we’re given no indication that Mason has worked on anything else in the meantime, Mason has become a huge star.

So I guess what I’m saying is that Batiuk came at this all half-assed when he realized he wanted to write about a Starbuck Jones movie rather than a Lisa movie, and he’s only gotten more shoddy and haphazard since. There is literally not one thing about this entire storyline that makes any sense.